Vail Daily column: The journey and the destination

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"Are we there yet?" "How much farther do we have to go?" "Can you please go faster?"

Anyone who has taken a long trip or car ride with anxious children or impatient adults has heard these questions before, and probably similar questions, comments or complaints many times over. It seems that many people want to arrive at their destination without actually going through the journey. It's like saying we want to win without playing the game. Where is the fun in that?

Whether they suffer from a need for instant gratification or have a belief in teleportation like "Beam me up Scotty," they are missing everything that makes arriving at our destination worth the journey and all of the experiences that it took to get us there.

Could you imagine if the coin toss in a football game actually decided the outcome? The players returning to the locker room, high fiving each other, and passionately talking about the way the referee flipped the coin, how it bounced on the turf, and how they were racked with nerves and excitement waiting for the heads or tails outcome. That's not how it works, right? They want to go back to the locker room a little battered and bruised, muddy and sweaty, and talk about the amazing plays, big hits, and spirit of the game. They want to share in their experience the journey.

Would we really buy a season pass or lift ticket so that we could take the chairlift up and then immediately ride it back down? No way. We want to feel the pull of gravity, the steepness of the hill, the snow under our feet as we ski or snowboard down the mountain. We want to set our edges, make sweeping turns, fly through the powder, and maybe take in a few bumps along the way. We want the journey of getting to the bottom so that we can get back on the lift and share the stories of our last run with our friends on the chairlift and everyone who will listen at apres ski at the end of the day.

While we are on our journey it is also important that we will fail sometimes, we will have set backs, and we will even lose sometimes. If I stick with the football analogy there hasn't been an undefeated Super Bowl winner since 1972. But 40 teams have won the championship since then, all with losses on their record. And how many of us have caught an edge in the middle of great ski run and wiped out? So on our journey and as we grow we must be willing to fail, just as long as we learn from the setback and keep moving in the direction of our destination.

Lastly, we need to have that destination clearly in our hearts and mind because as we move towards our ultimate goal we will reach mini-destinations along the way. It is kind of like aiming for the moon and hitting a star.

I would love to hear all about your journey and your destination at gotonorton@gmail.com and I hope it will be a better than good week for each of you.

Michael Norton is a strategic consultant, business and personal coach and motivational speaker, and CEO of www.candogo.com. He writes a weekly motivational column for the Vail Daily.